Summer Running

This is the beginning of the fifth summer that I've been a runner. I'm 40 now, and the first summer that I ran was the summer after I turned 36. I know it's not summer yet, but it may as well be. We're past Memorial Day and the kids are out of school. Anyway...

The first three summers, I didn't run much. Heat zaps me more than anything else I can think of, even fatigue. I just have not been able to run well in the summer. Last summer was the first summer that I didn't take mostly off. Last summer, I maintained a base of about 55-60 miles with some fast, short stuff mixed in. That seemed to work well and improved my leg turnover.

This summer, I have a crazy plan. I'm planning to build my biggest base ever. I'm hoping to build up to 90-100 miles per week. I'm planning to do this with easy to moderately paced miles. I'll be running anywhere from marathon pace to 10:00 miles. I plan to double as much as possible and run at least a 20 miler every week. Then, I'll mix in some fast running closer to race season this fall. I got the idea from reading about Lydiard principles. We'll see how my body responds.

Today, I did a very hilly (no enormous hills, but the course was relentless rolling hills) 21 miler. Whew! It was brutal. I really enjoyed the hills, but I completely fell apart at 18 miles. I had absolutely nothing left and walked a lot of the last 2 miles. The road had very light traffic (that's what I was hoping for when I chose the route and time of day). I found myself wishing for a car to pass! At about 19.5 miles, I heard a car coming from behind me. I turned around and saw that it was a relatively late model mini-van. I was desperate to stop running. So, yes, I did. I stuck my thumb out. But he kept on driving by. I'm 0 for 1 in hitching a ride! It probably took me about 18 minutes to run that last mile and a half. I was done!

I just felt the need to run all of my energy out today. I succeeded.

Anyway, that's my interesting Saturday morning run story for this week.